


Unnecessary Favors

by Umbrella_ella



Series: A Fair Trade [Publisher/Author Verse] [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, in which gold is soft for a lot of reasons, none of which include a certain author, that would be ridiculous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-06-30 23:27:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15761898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Umbrella_ella/pseuds/Umbrella_ella
Summary: Gold returns Belle's manuscript. Adorable awkwardness ensues.





	Unnecessary Favors

**Author's Note:**

> If you're inclined, leave a comment or kudos! Enjoy!

Gold’s heart doubles in rate, rapping out a beat that keeps time with his quick feet, the fast click of his cane against the pavement announcing him to passersby, who whisper behind their hands and openly stare as he makes his way down Main.

Storybrooke’s Main street is bursting with people, most of whom chatter away in front of Granny’s, pausing their gossips only to stare and gawk. He wished they wouldn’t; the tap of his cane gives him away every time, and he can no more slip past them than an elephant could hurtle down the street unnoticed.

He sneers openly at David Nolan, a young man who is by all rights, fair and genial, but who now stares in shock as the sheaf of papers slip from beneath Gold’s elbow and he hisses out a curse.

By lunchtime, it’s sure to be spread far and wide to the corners of Storybrooke– the town pariah, the ghoul who knocked about in his office, snide and rude, limping quickly to the floral shop with not one, but two coffees in a drink carrier, and a manuscript tucked under his arm. Granny had looked on, face twisted in an odd sort of shock, as he ordered two coffees only minutes before. Gold thought she might have had a small stroke then.

David, to his credit, leaps into action, scooping up the papers and passing them to Gold before Gold has to awkwardly stoop down himself and embarrass himself in front of half of Storybrooke’s population.

David simply rounds the iron-wrought fence separating diners from the sidewalk and tucks the papers he’d dropped back under Gold’s elbow his other hand clapping Gold on the shoulder before the young man clears his throat and removes the offending hand, remembering himself.

“There you are,” David grins easily, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and Gold nearly smiles.

Nearly.

He thinks better of it.

“Aren’t you a regular hero?”

David furrows his brow, opening his mouth as if to say something, but thinks better of it, apparently, and instead smiles again, and Gold suddenly wishes he’d thought to wear sunglasses.

“I hope that’s for me,” David chuckles, and Gold tightens his grip round his cane.

“It’s not.” Gold squints as a breeze curls through the cold, nipping at his fingers, “now, excuse me.”

Gold passes the library, then, the closed sign hanging in the window, and makes his way to Game of Thorns, Moe French’s shop, sure he’ll find Miss French there. When the bell above the door tinkles, a ruddy, round face greets him, confounded, if not by Gold’s appearance, then certainly by the coffees he carries. Which are getting very heavy, his forearm clenching and stinging.

Perhaps it’s rude, but better to fulfill that rumor than to make a mess of his three-piece dove grey suit and oxfords, so he plops the tray onto Moe’s work counter, and curls his arm to lessen the tension.

“Is Miss French here today? I have something of hers to return.”

Moe looks down at the coffees and Rumford follows suit; one rim is stained with coffee, having sloshed out along the way, and casts a dubious glance back up at Gold.

“I was getting myself coffee on the way back to the office,” he says, as if that is in any way convincing, and really, he hadn’t had a good excuse for purchasing two coffees, but Belle’s face had appeared in his mind’s eye, and he recalled that she was especially pale and tired on Mondays. Mondays demanded a four hour shift at the library, an eight hour shift at the flower shop, and another four at the library hosting the after school reading club.

Not that Gold paid attention.

It was simply that he didn’t want to waste a great deal of time on whatever error-filled manuscript she might turn in on Wednesday, because if anything was more mindnumbing than reading Miss French’s manuscript, it was reading all of her errors.

Gold swallows as Moe stares, suspicious eyes following him as Gold reaches out to closely examine a hydrangea, it’s purple flowers small and delicate beneath his fingertips.

It seemed Moe’s otherwise limited intelligence did actually include the layout of the business-mottled Main street, and Gold knew that Moe was aware of the fact that Gold’s office was on the other side of Granny’s, three blocks the opposite way, in fact.

“Belle,” Moe barks, and briefly, Gold wonders if it’s entirely necessary to shout quite that loud when the space is no bigger than a seedy gas station he’d stopped at once during a late night drive from Portland, and just as abandoned.

“Yes, fath– oh!” Belle’s eyes widen upon seeing who had entered the shop, stopping abruptly. Water from the can she holds sloshes down her front, soaking the apron she wears, which she quickly doffs and flings to the sideboard, careful to avoid the roses that await wrapping. Her hair is a little frazzled, curling up from beneath her cap, and her face is reddened with the strain of hard labor.

“I,” suddenly, Gold is less confident, and he feels out of place in the flower shop with it’s colors and smells and close quarters, and Miss French’s blue eyes staring at him quizzically, “I brought you your papers. You left them on my desk last week. I thought you might…”

He trails off, swallowing back the snide remark he wishes to barb her with, instead preferring to remain quiet.

“Thank you?” she says, and it’s more of a question than a statement, and it’s no wonder, because he could have just waited until Wednesday and given her a proper talking to about leaving her work just anywhere.

But he hadn’t.

“It’s not drivel, not really,” he admits suddenly, the urge to fill the awkwardness between them far more pressing than preserving his cold facade, and he wishes he could vault out of the shop window for the way Moe French’s eye bug out at the scene before him. For a long moment, the drip of the water from her apron is the only thing to be heard.

“Really?” Belle smirks, and Gold pleads internally that she can’t hear the way his heart pounds at that. Her rosebud lips fold into a bright smile.

“I’ll see you,” he coughs out, edging towards the door, eager to escape the critical eyes of the French family before he says anything more to cast his carefully crafted reputation into the fire, “Wednesday.”

The bell is muffled as he lets the door shut behind him. He makes it half a block before he realizes he’s forgotten his own coffee.

Casting a surreptitious look back at the shop, he catches a glimpse of Belle in the window, her lips crooked and her cheeks flushed.

Gold tapped along back the way he came, eager to return to the safety of his office.


End file.
